HOW TO – REPOTTING SUCCULENTS WITH JAMES

If you are a gardening enthusiast, then chances are that you are in love with greenery. You are a person who would probably bring every type of plant home, be it the types of boxwood shrubs or succulents.

Having said that, if you are going to buy the latter, you’re going to need to know how to re-pot them into cute pots. I know nothing about gardening except for a truly exceptional deftness of letting plants die. Even the ones they tell me will never die. James to the rescue!!

First, you need to gather your supplies. This includes

• a plant.
• a pot.
• dirt.
• water.
• sand.
• rocks.
• a can-do spirit.

Start by putting a spoonful or two of sand into the bottom of your new pot. This is to help with drainage, so that if you put extra water on your plant, it doesn’t sit in the dirt and rot the roots. James says succulents don’t like their toes wet. If it’s a bigger pot than this, about half an inch of sand will be good. If your pot has a drainage hole, don’t use sand, go right to the rocks.

Add a thin layer of rocks, about the same amount as you had of sand.

Squeeze the sides of the plant alternately to get the dirt to loosen from the disposable pot.

Put your plant and its dirt into the pot. Tap the dirt gently to get it to settle, and make sure your plant is up straight.

Add some more dirt to fill in the gaps, and tap lightly.

Add some sand or rocks to the top of the plant. I don’t remember why James does this. But for succulents that don’t have very big roots, it helps keep them upright.

EDIT: I remembered why you put rocks on top. They help keep the water from evaporating before the plant can drink it.

Add a good splash of water. If you can see through your pot, you want all the water to be sitting in the drainage area, and not up keeping the dirt wet. This is so the plant can drink up the water at its leisure, and not drown.

Add the plant ID markers or write its name on a popsicle stick so you can know what it is if you need to look something up about it later.

Last Looks

Now add your brand new succulent to your cactus garden and ENJOY IT WITH YOUR EYES.